What I take in, reading, watching, listening… consumption of the conspicuous and commercial. And what I think about it.
If you like some songs by The Clash, listen to some today. Why not? Get reacquainted with their broken Spanish, deep lyrics, and ska-styled youth-outrage. Start with Something About England, for its horrific relevance to today. If you like The Clash, you can’t go wrong with “one of the five weirdest albums of all time,” […]
I have just posted this year’s album art for SXSW, the Music festival in Austin in eleven days. But all is not well. SXSW has offered one track from each artist as a download (as a .torrent) since at least 2005. According to the Unofficial SXSW Torrents site, while there are a small number of […]
I don’t do this often (enough?) but this tweet from Wonderella is so pitch perfect on the topic of the Oxford Dictionary and Miley Cyrus, that I can’t help myself: The Oxford Dictionary added an entry on “Twerking”. They removed “Dignity” to make room, since we weren’t using it anyway.— Wonderella (@wonderella) August 28, 2013
There is so much to say about today’s NRA statement in relation to the Sandy Hook shooting. But let us start with this. The NRA blames the shooting on a culture of violence. They call out video games (specific ones, I guess you know who your friends are now!), media, the government. It’s actually a […]
So, my wife and I had a little conversation today about hunters and their guns in light of my previous post. We eat meat, and that meat has to be killed; hunters kill animals, and some of them eat that meat… she wondered if there was a problem with my argument in that context. I […]
I heard about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, hours after it happened. I was flying East that day, and hadn’t checked in with the news. I don’t know anyone involved, but I have two boys in elementary school, one a six-year-old first grader. I have been sad, confused, and angry in turns, sometimes all at […]
On the one hand, the Boy Scouts of America are (officially) a discriminatory organization of whom I really do not approve. On the other hand, my boys are in Boy Scouts (Cub Scouts, technically). They enjoy the peer social activities, and I enjoy the opportunities they would not have if they were not in an […]
Driving to work today, I drove by a home in our neighborhood where they had mounted a huge American flag on a flagpole attached to a tree. I thought of all the people who had their lives taken from them on 9/11/2001, and all the people who had someone ripped from their hearts on that […]
Yeah, so Lance Armstrong is a jerk. He won seven Tour de France races, but has just not-admitted that he won them all with the help of performance enhancing drugs. He used those wins to fuel a shockingly successful endorsement career, and used that money to fuel a shockingly widespread philanthropic effort. Oh, and he […]
I think I might need to shop at jcpenney more now (and we’re going clothes-hunting this week end). It used to be the place we went last, usually for a winter coat, if we’d bombed out elsewhere, but I’ve been trying to think more favorably about them recently, given their Apple-alum CEO. This may just […]